Articles | Volume 8, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-8-1275-2015
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-8-1275-2015
Methods for assessment of models
 | 
04 May 2015
Methods for assessment of models |  | 04 May 2015

A stabilized finite element method for calculating balance velocities in ice sheets

D. Brinkerhoff and J. Johnson

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Cited articles

Bamber, J. L., Vaughan, D. G., and Joughin, I.: Widespread complex flow in the interior of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, Science, 287, 1248–1250, 2000.
Bamber, J. L., Layberry, R. L., and Gogineni, S. P.: A new ice thickness and bed data set for the Greenland Ice Sheet 1. measurement, data reduction, and errors, J. Geophys. Res., 106, 33773–33780, 2001.
Bamber, J. L., Griggs, J. A., Hurkmans, R. T. W. L., Dowdeswell, J. A., Gogineni, S. P., Howat, I., Mouginot, J., Paden, J., Palmer, S., Rignot, E., and Steinhage, D.: A new bed elevation dataset for Greenland, The Cryosphere, 7, 499–510, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-7-499-2013, 2013.
Brinkerhoff, D. J. and Johnson, J. V.: Data assimilation and prognostic whole ice sheet modelling with the variationally derived, higher order, open source, and fully parallel ice sheet model VarGlaS, The Cryosphere, 7, 1161–1184, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-7-1161-2013, 2013.
Brooks, A. N. and Hughes, T. J.: Streamline upwind/Petrov-Galerkin formulations for convection dominated flows with particular emphasis on the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, Comput. Method. Appl. M., 32, 199–259, https://doi.org/10.1016/0045-7825(82)90071-8, 1982.
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Short summary
We present a novel numerical method for computing velocity fields in ice sheets using the principle of mass conservation, and show that, for suitable smoothing of flow directions, the velocity converges to a unique solution under grid refinement. We use this method as the forward model in a constrained optimization problem, and use these so-called balance velocities to seamlessly fill in gaps between satellite-based velocity observations.
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